


tragedy on the stage

by pyotr



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Bad Spanish, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 10:49:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13569024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyotr/pseuds/pyotr
Summary: héctor played guitar like it was something sacred, like a prayer, his eyes closed and expression twisted in rapture as his fingers dance over the strings.five things ernesto knew about héctor, and one thing he didn't.





	tragedy on the stage

**Author's Note:**

> Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life.  
> — Antonin Artaud

héctor was young, and freshly orphaned, and plagued by nightmares. 

enresto knew this. he laid awake near every night and listened to the other boy toss and turn and get tangled in his sheets, his harsh breathing in the quiet, the quiet whimpers he made when his dreams took hold too tightly. and he wanted to help, he really did, but ernesto was fifteen years old and had a hard enough time struggling with his own thoughts and feelings and dreams without taking on the burden of some skinny kid he hardly knew.

that lasted for all of a week, perhaps.

he kicks off his blankets on the eighth night, walks as quietly as he can across the old wooden floorboards to seat himself on the edge of héctor’s bed, the creaky frame groaning beneath his added weight. even in the dim light that seeped in through the tiny window, he could see the twist to héctor’s expression, the sheen of sweat on his brow. 

 _“oye, chamaco,”_ he whispers, suddenly sharp against the silence, but héctor doesn’t respond, still caught in the throes of his nightmare. ernesto heaves a sigh and reaches for his shoulder, shaking gently. “wake up, wake up.”

and héctor sits bolt upright with a ragged-sounding gasp, his eyes blown wide in the darkness, and clutches at the nearest thing. that  _nearest thing_ just so happened to be ernesto himself, and he didn’t quite have the heart to push the kid away- this kid he’s known barely a week- not when he was like this, still trembling from whatever had haunted his dreams, his face pressed to ernesto’s chest and arms wound around his middle.

“i s-saw him,” héctor says, and there’s just the barest quaver to his voice, breathless, “b-but it wasn’t him, not… not like when he left, but h-he promised to come back, he did!”

his father, he was talking about his father. ernesto had heard some of  _las monjas_  talking, whispering behind their hands about how héctor’s mother had died some years before and now his father had gone off to war and gotten himself killed, too. it had all felt rather clandestine, at the time, but he hadn’t thought that the boy dreamt about it.

suddenly ernesto felt too young, too out of his depth; he didn’t know how to deal with this, didn’t know how to soothe his fears or offer reassurance. but he lets his arms fall about héctor’s shoulders in a stiff sort of hug, half-pulling him closer as the kid sniffled against his shirt.

“hey, hey, it’s alright,” he tries to soothe, but it feels clumsy and insincere, like there’s something caught in his throat. “it’s okay, kid,  _lo prometo.”_

* * *

héctor played guitar like it was something sacred, like a prayer, his eyes closed and expression twisted in rapture as his fingers dance over the strings.

ernesto, twenty years old and half in love with him, watches awestruck, drinking in the look on his face and the way that the music seems to sing through him. he’d known that héctor could play, had heard him stum out a tune or hum some ditty or another, but he’d never  _seen_ him play, not like this, not with his whole soul.

“how was it?” héctor asks him, gnawing at his bottom lip as if he were nervous, big brown eyes wide and hopeful. “ _mi canción._  i wrote it,  _sabes.”_

ernesto takes a moment to answer, scrambling for words; he never had to do that with anyone but héctor, and it simultaneously thrilled and annoyed him. he rallies, though, with a smile, something almost soft, not like the false grins dripping with charm that he typically wore. it felt good to be honest for once, but also strange, vulnerable.

“beautiful,  _amigo”_ he says and he’s not sure if he’s talking about the music or héctor himself, but héctor didn’t have to know that. “ _¡magnífico!_  and you just came up with that, out of your head?”

héctor’s face, pinched and anxious, eases into a relieved- if bashful- smile, and he rubs at the back of his neck, ruffles his already unruly hair. he had never been a shy one, per se, but always much more modest in his talents than ernesto, more likely to laugh off praise. he drags his fingers over the strings once more in an idle movement, shrugs his shoulders a bit, but he looks almost grateful.

“oh, it was just a little song,” he says, “nothing very special.”

“héctor,” ernesto says with conviction, placing his hands on his friends shoulders, “you are going to change the world, someday.”

* * *

ernesto didn’t meet imelda properly until a few days before the wedding.

oh, he knew  _of_ her, of course. she was the one girl in santa cecilia who seemed unswayed by his antics. she came through the plaza every friday afternoon and he called out to her every time, followed a few steps behind her playing a teasing, lilting tune about love and sweet kisses, and he laughed when she turned up her nose while the other girls swooned. 

and he heard the stories, too, from other men, men who had tried wooing her, only to be met with sharp words or a shoe. or the old women who gossiped on the street corners he played at, strumming idly at his guitar as they talked; how she was such a pretty girl and could snag a good man if only she were warmer, if only she smiled more, how her parents must have been so embarrassed.

he had thought it all good fun, nothing too serious, until héctor began sighing over her.

he would watch her swan through the plaza or herd her younger brothers around with his chin propped on the heel of his hand, his elbow on his knee, a rather lovesick look on his face. it made something in ernesto’s stomach twist unpleasantly.

he had wanted to rage when héctor had come to him and told him that they were to be married, that he had actually asked quite some time ago but hadn’t known how to break the news. he had wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him, ask him what he was doing, why he was giving up on their dream.

but he didn’t.

imelda didn’t like ernesto the first time héctor had introduced them, something hopeful lurking in his face. she had been cold and stiff towards him, distantly polite, and perhaps ernesto had been just a bit too needling, too sharp in his own responses, his smiles ugly and mean. ernesto didn’t like her either, didn’t want to like her, this woman who was bent on taking his best friend away from him.

but he watched the way that héctor treated her, all gentle hands and sweet smiles, the way he seemed to revolve around her. he sat at imelda’s side rather than ernesto’s, couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from her. ernesto swallows back the jealousy, forces himself to smile at them both.

he goes to the wedding because he loves héctor, because héctor is his best friend, because perhaps this is god’s way of punishing him for his sin. he is silent, and still, but he manages a smile whenever héctor glances over at him and drinks in the quick quirk of the mouth that he receives in response.

they say their vows and ernesto sees the softness in imelda’s face, the brightness in héctor’s eyes, and knows then and there that héctor will always choose him second. 

* * *

he had never meant to become a murderer. that was the one truth he would cling to until the end of time.

“i could never hate you,” he’d told héctor as he was leaving, and he had meant it, something twisting into a knot in his stomach. and he had hated it, that softening in him; half-wished that he  _could_ hate him, after all the hurt.

he loved héctor, he could admit that to himself. trusted him with his life, even, because héctor was possibly the kindest, least self-centered man ernesto had ever met, but he couldn’t trust him not to leave. and leaving, well- that was something that ernesto wasn’t sure that he could bear.

he wasn’t blind. he saw how héctor put his heart into his music and how he came alive on stage, but he’d also seen the other things, how héctor had become more distant, more drawn into himself, how he had become fidgety and impatient and anxious. he was always looking into the distance, searching for something, and it tore ernesto up from the inside out.

he had only meant to make héctor sick enough to miss his last train, to give him time to reconsider because this  _obviously_ wasn’t the right decision. fame was within their reach, right around the corner, ernesto could nearly taste it; they had come too far and sacrificed too much for héctor to abandon their dream now. 

and héctor looks back at him, the stiff anger in hs expression loosening, warming into a tiny smile. he turns and lets the door close, sets his suitcase back down as ernesto pours the drinks, cheap tequila cut with wood varnish to hide the taste. he holds one out, and his breath still catches at the way that héctor’s fingers brush his own.

“i would move heaven and earth for you,” he says, staring into héctor’s eyes. he doesn’t say the things he wants to,  _please don’t leave me, i love you._

he knows that night, as he watches héctor’s knees buckle and his shoulder shake with coughing, that he has caused his own heartbreak this time.

* * *

ernesto had been forty-six years old when he died.

he had always thought that was a respectable enough age to be forever, forty-six, not too young but not all that old, either, just enough to be distinguished. that’s what his agents had said when he was alive, anyway, whenever he had mentioned dying the silver at his temples- that age made him  _distinguished._ and ernesto, knowing that they just  _handsome,_ had smiled and nodded and agreed.

now, though, he just feels old. héctor, forever twenty-one and bright with rage, with hurt, curls his skeletal fingers into ernesto’s necktie, holds tight to his charro jacket. his expression is twisted with so much anger, anger that ernesto had never seen him wear in life, and there is something anguished in his eyes, replacing the gentle affection that he had always used to hold for him. 

“how could you?” héctor’s voice is ragged, nearly as ragged as his clothes. this close, ernesto can see just how yellowed his bones are, all the hairline fractures, just how close he was to fading. “you took everything from me!”

ernesto catches his wrist as he draws his arm back for a punch and holds tight, something aching between his ribs. because héctor wasn’t wrong, he had taken everything from him, but with héctor’s death ernesto had lost everything, too. he still couldn’t decide if it was worth it. he had gotten his fame, achieved their dream for the both of them, but it was a lonely thing without héctor there at his side.

he forces himself to watch as security drags héctor away, runs a hand through his disheveled hair; if he whispers  _i’m sorry_ under his breath, well, no one would know, really. 

still, ernesto gives himself a moment after both héctor and miguel are gone, sits himself on the stairs and cradles his head in his hands. he was a showman, had to pull himself together, but… he was a coward, too. that, at its heart, was why he hadn’t sought out héctor as soon as he’d died. 

he loved héctor even as he was afraid of him, afraid of what he could do to him. a hundred years and so much hurt, and he knew that even now héctor still held his heart.

* * *

héctor tries not to think too much about him, in the years following. 

why should he? thinks are good, now. he has his family, is surrounded by the people he loves. he’s not being forgotten, and he can play music again without that awful heavy feeling weighing down on his chest. he hadn’t been this happy in decades, not since he was alive.

but it was still different. imelda wasn’t the same woman he had known in life, though he loved her fiercely regardless. she was older, more worn; she had lived fifty years of her life hating him as much as she loved him, and that didn’t go away all at once. oscar and felipe were older, too, still troublemakers but now unsettlingly wise, miles from the boys he’d called his brothers. and the others- rosita, julio, victoria- they were family but he didn’t know them, not really.

he missed how things had been, before he’d died. before he’d been  _murdered._

he missed ernesto.

and wasn’t that pathetic, to miss the man who had killed him? but ernesto had always known him best, had always teased him and laughed with him and made him feel like he belonged somewhere. they had been outcasts and misfits, the both of them, but they had always had each other. 

he would have followed ernesto anywhere, he knew, had imelda never come along, had he never had coco. 

there had always been that strange thing between them, something unspoken and forbidden, that héctor had been too afraid to approach. it was there in the way that ernesto had looked at him when he thought héctor couldn’t see, or the way that they carefully kept to opposite sides when the motel only had one bed. it had terrified him, sent his heart to beating hard, his stomach a flurry of nerves.

a century removed, now, héctor could admit that maybe he could have loved ernesto, if things had been different. that maybe he always had.


End file.
